Onward Christian Soldiers

Be sure and read this disturbing article from the LA Times. Once again a group of American evangelicals are attempting to "take back" something else for Christ. This time it just so happens to be the military. I understand that war is certainly a place where hopelessness and man's inhumanity to man is seen vividly, driving otherwise oblivious young men and women to attend chapel services and so on. I also understand that there is a chaplaincy program that exists for just this purpose. But honestly, sending "care packages" filled with Bibles and video games about the Rapture seems terribly inappropriate. There are apparently a significant amount of Christians that must sanctify everything including the current war in Iraq. The war in Iraq is not a holy war with a Christian nation fighting under the Chi Ro against the Mohammaden infidels. The war instead, consists of men and women bearing the literal sword under the orders of the civil magistrate. As a Christian I am obviously in full support of the chaplaincy being there to comfort the soldiers and share the hope and comfort that is the Gospel of Christ. What I oppose is the blatant disregard of not only the United States Constitution but of decent graciousness and respect owed to even our unbelieving neighbors. May the church not only pray for the soldiers, but also for the significant number of evangelicals who feel it is necessary to send packages that consist of eschatological scare tactics to already stressed and burned out soldiers. May the American church seek wisdom in discerning that this current war is many things, but religious it is not. After all, "we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." As the author of the piece so lucidly puts it,

It's time to actively strip the so-called war on terror of its religious connotations, not add to them. Because religious wars are not just ugly, they are unwinnable. And despite what Operation Straight Up and its supporters in the Pentagon may think is taking place in Iraq, the Rapture is not a viable exit strategy.

Also, I understand the picture isn't really relevant or appropriate it's pretty dang funny.

A Light Beer Actually Worth Drinking

For those of us trying to watch our figure I highly recommend Skinny Dip by New Belgium. Finally a full flavored non-watered down light beer that is full of flavor. It's quite refreshing is very unique because of its being spiced with a kaffir lime leaf. Worth a try!

Skinny Dip on the Interweb as I like to call it

Best Movies of 2006

Being a student with limited financial resources and a demanding seminary curriculum it apparently takes until August of the following year to go back and reflect on the best films and music of 2006. Some may wonder why it would even be worth doing a list of the best films and music of '06 this late and I really don't have an answer for you except this is what blogs are for...namely sharing your opinion that virtually no one has any reason to care about. I will first be posting my top 10 films of 2006. I don't necessarily have a list of criteria on what determines the better movies of the year. I merely have an amateur eye for understanding film techniques and in no way have a future as a film critic. Yet I love movies and understand film to be one of the most powerful mediums today. Is it necessary to watch movies in order to engage with our culture? Probably not. But I like movies because great movies like great literature accurately portray the world and humanity as it really is. Why are movies backed by Christian production companies typically so bad? That's easy, they portray a world foreign to us all. A world full of positive and encouraging people and circumstances and if by chance conflict and adversity arises, God will save the day. The fact of the matter is that the world isn't always positive and encouraging. Often it is quite the opposite and our God often fails to save the day as he is portrayed as doing in Christian movies. All he promises to do is be with us, suffer with us, and one day redeem and make right every messed up part of this world.
Without further ado, my top movies of 2006.

#10 - Babel
As the name suggests, biblical imagery and references permeate this film highlighting the confusion and utter frustration of human beings not being able to communicate with other human beings. With multiple story lines running throughout the film the one thing that binds them all together is the fact that not being able to verbally communicate with one another leads to confusion and ultimately tragedy. The profundity of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel is made vivid when we are shown the very real consequences of God's ancient judgment that is still experienced today.

#9 - Thank You For Smoking
A hilarious satirical film about the cigarette industry and all of the political and legal lobbying that goes on behind the scenes. The story revolves around the world of a top notch spin doctor who works for the tobacco industry and does everything from encourage Hollywood to bring back smoking in films to bribing the dying Marlboro man in order to avoid a law suit. It's not an easy task finding an intelligent film that is still laugh out loud funny.

#8 - The Prestige
Director Christopher Nolan continues to prove himself as one of the best new directors. This suspenseful drama about two rival magicians was one of the most intelligent films of the year begging to be watched multiple times in order to grasp all of the twists and "misdirections" present throughout. While The Prestige could have been just an edgy movie movie about magicians starring beautiful people, I was especially engaged by Hugh Jackman's portrayal of a man consumed with obsession for his rival (Christian Bale). Plus David Bowie can only help but make a good product awesome.

#7 - Marie Antoinette
While most likely one of the more historically dubious movies of the year, it was one of the most entertaining films of the year. Sofia Coppola's third turn as director is my favorite of what she's made so far (I never really appreciated Lost In Translation to the extent critic did). This biopic of Marie Antoinette probably makes my list because of Coppola's full use of her artistic medium. Roger Ebert makes my point better than I can, "Coppola has been criticized in some circles for her use of a contemporary pop overlay -- hit songs, incongruous dialogue, jarring intrusions of the Now upon the Then. But no one ever lives as Then; it is always Now. Many characters in historical films seem somehow aware that they are living in the past. Marie seems to think she is a teenager living in the present, which of course she is -- and the contemporary pop references invite the audience to share her present with ours."

#6 - Stranger Than Fiction
While not on most critics lists for the best film of the year, the fact of the matter is that I love Will Ferrell. In college when Cassie and I would have a bad day we would simply give each other the look and in went Anchor Man. Sometimes as a film viewer you just appreciate a creative story with a decent message, for me, that's what this movie was. It wasn't great and didn't win any prestigious awards, it was just a fun and entertaining film.

#5 - The Queen
By geographical default, the United States is an isolationist nation. Our local newscasts would sooner run a story about a pig that can windsurf than actual global landscape changing events on the other six continents in the world. The Queen makes my list because for two hours I was deeply concerned with the British government's handling of an event that was on the scale of a national crisis. It was bigger than just a retelling of the story of Princess Diana's death and the response of Queen Elizabeth. It was about a dying (if not dead) way of life. In the United States we have long understood the impotence of the British crown but seeing the power struggle between the Queen and new PM Tony Blair at the time of events gives those of us far removed from such an event fresh perspective.

# 4 - Brick
A teenage crime drama where modern 16 and 17- year olds in Southern California speak with classic film noir dialogue. While sounding like a recipe for disaster it some how miraculously works. Brick is one of the more engaging films of the year. We don't really care about the characters' fates because we know they are over the top, they are merely representing old school crime drama archetypes but we still watch to see what will happen next in a stylized way with overwritten dialogue.

# 3 - The Departed
When I was in high school I saw The Godfather for the first time. For three hours I was completely and totally engaged. From there I saw the rest of the Godfather series (te absolvo non Part 3) Goodfellas and any other moffia inspired movie that came out since. All of this to say I really liked The Departed.

# 2 - Little Miss Sunshine
What can I say, an iconic comedy with an iconic yellow VW bus and an iconic dance. A seriously messed up family going to a beauty pageant with more seriously messed up families ruining their daughters lives. Little Miss Sunshine is both hilarious and tragic, much the same as life.

# 1 - Children of Men
First of all let me say that I am embarrassed to admit that I had no idea that this was a novel before I saw the film let alone a novel by P. D. James. It was after listening to a Mars Hill Audio Journal with Ken Myers that I was informed that The Children of Men was perhaps her most blatantly Christian novel. In retrospect this doesn't surprise me. I still haven't read the book but this film portrays such a bleak outlook on the depravity of humanity. It's true that in the film there is no Gospel and there is no Christ. But there is plenty of hopelessness and sin, and that is after all half the equation. Director Alfonso Cuaron presents a visually stunning movie that takes dark, gray tones to a new level with Emmanuel Lubezki's breathtaking cinematography . I recall reading a Paste Magazine review of this movie where the reviewer expressed concern that the film (specifically its ending) was nihilistic. If nihilism was the only thing some viewers are taking away from a film like this, it is merely a reminder of how quickly this is becoming a depressing world where self-sacrifice and teleological ethics are interpreted as nihilistic.

I'm Thankful to Be an American

Those of you who know me well are probably thinking that these words may seem odd coming from me. It's not that I dislike being an American (though I would have preferred to have been born with a rich Scottish accent), it's just that I've understood my being an American as just another part of God's providential plan and care of my life. I had no choice concerning who my parents would be or where I would be born, it just happened this way providentially. On an earlier post this morning I wrote about health care and was trying to get at the point that the Bible should not be the source of determining which political polity and philosophy I support (by the way I fully understand the controversy in this statement and perhaps will address it at a later date). In posting that blog I picked up D. G. Hart's A Secular Faith which I read at the beginning of the summer. Thumbing through it again I realized just how thankful I am to be in a country like the United States. I often get upset with the religious right trying to take back America for Christ and the other attempts to get back to the "Christian nation" of our forefathers. Hart's book helped me to realize what it actually means to be free. This past year Cassie and I have joined a Presbyterian church and have embraced the traditional doctrines of confessional Reformed theology. It was a matter of adhering to our changing consciences and there was never any threat during this time of the state interfering with our decision. We didn't have to sneak around to underground churches risking our lives, nor were we ever forced to register with the state as we came to embrace paedobaptism, with the risk of persecution (I can handle a couple of rowdy Baptists). We were only accountable to each other, taking for granted that all over the world those who come to Christ must risk their livelihood in making the same decisions that we made. Another quote from Hart's book would help to make clear what I'm trying to say:

"The United States affords Christians remarkable freedom to worship according to the demands of their religion and the dictates of their conscience, a freedom unparalleled in the records of human history. To conceive of those instances where Christians do not
receive public affirmation or state sanction for their convictions or practices as treatment
bordering on tyranny is to trivialize the many instances throughout church history of
persecution" (71).

All the bickering about the 10 Commandments in court houses, prayer in school, and holiday "crèches" only serve to trivialize what is intrinsically a divisive faith. May Christians in this country realize the blessings that we actually do have. The blessings that really count. I have no desire to impose my beliefs on others by making their children pray in Jesus' name or however else I can force Jesus onto them. I do have a desire and a need to hear the Word preached and my faith nourished by receiving the Lord's Supper every Lord's Day, as well as proclaim and share the Gospel with my neighbor without fear of state-sponsored persecution. I am grateful for the freedom I have in this country. Perhaps my teenage rebellion is finally wearing off.

Christians and Healthcare

One of the more disturbing blog posts I’ve read lately would have to be J. P. Moreland’s Star Parker and Michael Moore on Jesus’ View of Healthcare. Growing up in southern California my first theological heroes were the philosophy professors at Talbot and their intellectual rigor in defending and expounding the faith. I remember reading Moreland’s Love Your God with All Your Mind and how it changed my life. It was during my undergraduate days that I became a predestinarian and began switching my theological (and apologetical) alliance, becoming more of a Van Tilian. My official disenchantment with Moreland was when he spoke at a theological lectureship at Moody and his lecture was titled “Why I am Not a Calvinist.” After filling up 45 minutes with recycled arguments as to how Calvinists worship a mean, cold, and vindictive God with plenty of fallacious appeals to emotion my appreciation of Moreland’s theological and biblical contributions diminished. Then came out this post - “ A careful study of Jesus and New Testament teaching proves beyond reasonable doubt that he took the state to be the guardian of negative rights, not the provider of positive ones.” What? What study of Jesus and the New Testament teaching have you been doing Dr. Moreland? Such an utter disregard for Two Kingdoms and the intent of the Gospels makes his case exegetically vacuous and theologically untenable. From my reading of the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, the Lord’s defense of political policies appear to be kept to a minimum. Perhaps Jesus is Dr. Moreland’s most esteemed political philosopher…he is not mine. If he were mine, I would be significantly reducing the importance and matchless significance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. With Darryl Hart I confess “…the basic teachings of Christianity are virtually useless for resolving America’s political disputes, thus significantly reducing, if not eliminating, the dilemma of how to relate Christianity and American politics” (A Secular Faith, 11). I do strongly believe in universal healthcare because in a free liberal society where we are all trying to uphold the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness healthcare seems to be a pretty essential ingredient. My belief in universal healthcare stems from my belief that the government’s primary responsibility is for the protection and betterment of the commonweal and only secondarily for the private individual. If you are rich I believe the government’s job is to take a good chunk of your money and tax it. This belief is not necessarily deduced from my reading of Scripture because I strongly do not believe the Bible ever speaks to how one should vote in a democratic republic. I believe in a consistent ethic of life, which for the most part evangelicals have completely disregarded. If a young teenage mother goes through with her pregnancy and delivers her child, a large constituency of evangelicals return the favor by promoting a culture of plutocracy and denial of basic human rights such as medical attention. I am not a naïve and liberal maniac. I certainly am not holding out for some utopian socialist ideal where we can all live in peace and harmony and work five hour shifts and hold hands as we usher in the millennium. What I am promoting is a decent humane healthcare system for arguably the richest nation in the world. Is that too much to ask? I don’t think so. Just ask Canada, France, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Germany, The UK, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, just to name a few. At the end of the day I don’t really care that Michel Moore thinks Jesus would support universal healthcare and neither should anyone else. He is a publicity whore who will say anything to make headlines including apparently using the name of Jesus to sell his product. What is truly beyond a reasonable doubt is that Jesus would support the universal propagation of his Gospel. This can happen in a free republic like the United States or in communist China.

Arcade Fire in Books & Culture

While usually hating everything B&C has to say about music, this article on Arcade Fire is actually pretty decent. The author of the piece writes concerning their latest release Funeral,

The music speaks of, to, and for a culture in the throes of a vast meaning problem, and within the comprehensiveness of Arcade Fire's vision, any attempt to draw lines of separation between religion, entertainment, advertising, and politics will always fail to signify. The categories aren't functional. It's all ideology all the time.

Read the article here

Reading List

There are few things in life I enjoy more than reading. Blogs are a wonderful avenue for challenging readers (such as myself) to interact with the literature we read and think through the material instead of passively taking in the information just to let it decay in our minds. Books I am currently reading include the following:

WSCAL's faculty book Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry
If you attend Westminster Seminary California reading this book is as close as you can come to displaying some serious school spirit.

Heiko Oberman's Luther: Man Between God and the Devil
This is a tremendous biography of Luther placing him in the pre-enlightenment ancient world that he was firmly a part of where the spiritual realm was as real to the reformer as any material entity. Luther suffers the same fate as every other great historical figure, namely making him into ourselves. While I am only a few pages into Oberman's biography the fact that the author's goal is to understand Martin Luther on his own terms and in his own world makes picking up the book a worthwhile endeavor. It's probably also worth mentioning that when Dr. Clark endorses a book such as this one, it goes on my list of books to read that same day.

George Eliot's Middlemarch
One of the better memories I have from by undergraduate days at Moody was a literature class called "Images of Christ in the Novel." It was in this class that the importance of great literature in the life of thoughtful Christians and especially pastors was emphasized. While the message of the cross is ultimately scandalous and an offense to the unregenerate mind, great preaching is more than just a Powerpoint presentation jamming knowledge down the throats of parishioners. It is literary in itself. As preachers it is wise to read and contemplate great artisans and wordsmiths of the English language for it is this language that will be our vehicle of conveying the Gospel.
It is in the great novelists and poets of the English speaking world that we find language and speech worthy of emulation. In the great novels of the past are story-tellers that enliven distant worlds and transport readers out of the humdrum of everyday life into rich drama (this doesn't sound too unlike the job of the pastor ushering his listeners into the plot of redemptive history). And finally it is in the classics of literature that we interact with some of history's brightest and wisest minds. Minds that understood the human condition far better than many Christians pumping out volume after volume on how to get the most out of life (and God).
In Eliot's Middlemarch, much of the story revolves around a small provincial town in 19th century England and the rapid ideological, political, and societal changes that accompany a small town's transition into the modern world. The author's unorthodox religion is prevalent throughout the novel as it is the clergyman who are the most antagonistic of the changing world (Interestingly, Eliot who was an overall brilliant woman would translate D. F. Strauss' Life of Jesus into English further helping to illumine her religious background). It was Eliot's radical religious views during the time she lived that initially sparked my interest in Middlemarch and made me interested in picking it up at the Newbury Library book sale in Chicago a few years ago.
Now...I'm gonna go read now.

Inaugural Blog

Greetings and welcome to the blog of another seminary student who thinks he might have something to add to what the kids are calling the blogosphere. I have entered the world of blogging with a certain level of apprehension. Do I have anything to say? Only time will tell. Will anyone even read this? I know at least one person will (I love you babe). If nothing else this is an opportunity to hone my writing skills and interact with the culture around us. I love theology, history, politics, films, and music so there is a more than likely chance that these topics will be the center of discussion in subsequent posts. Anyway, thanks for reading and let the journey begin. Godspeed.